


and I can't get you off my mind (when will you come home again?)

by SpaceguyLewis



Category: Overwatch (Video Game), The Martian - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, F/M, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Pseudoscience, the martian au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-03 00:09:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16315316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceguyLewis/pseuds/SpaceguyLewis
Summary: Paige Turner (just tall enough to be an astronaut of the Canadian Space Association, master botanist and engineer) is stranded on Mars after she's separated from her teammates during a mission-compromising dust storm. She’s not about to let that, or her crippling fear of being alone get her down, though.She’s got a near-magic leather jacket and her smoking hot Commander's old-ass music to get her through it.





	and I can't get you off my mind (when will you come home again?)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Misconduct](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8572498) by [Antiloquist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antiloquist/pseuds/Antiloquist), [FiveTail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiveTail/pseuds/FiveTail). 



> Title is from 'Lonely Town' by Brandon Flowers, which I had on repeat while editing this. 
> 
> So this was originally written on my phone at 11:36 PM on July 22, 2017 according to the timestamp on the note. It’s sat there untouched for over a year, so I figured I’d just post it anyways. In the unlikely event I write more of this, I’ll throw it up here. 
> 
> Also, if you haven’t read Misconduct and you’re a fan of incredibly well written OCs with slow burn and delicious pining as a side dish, it’s the fic for you.

Something was beeping. It was very annoying, and Paige wanted it to stop. There was also a heavy, throbbing source of agony in her side, and she wanted that to stop too.

 _Neither of these problems will be solved if you do not get up._ Paige whined as she remembered Zarya's pearl of wisdom, and opened her eyes. She was apparently lying down in a place with very red dirt, and it looked like she had a fishbowl on her head.

" _Pressure levels critical,_ " a robotic voice chirped at her, interrupting the beeping momentarily. Why would the pressure level be a problem - _oh_.

And then it all came rushing back; the sandstorm, the evacuation, the screams of her teammates as she was hit by a satellite dish and blacked out, the last thing she heard being her Commander shouting her name: " _Turner! Turner, can you hear —_ "

Damn. She hoped they were doing okay back on the Hermes. Paige slowly got her arms under her chest and propped herself up, letting out a shaky little gasp of pain as the movement jolted the thing stuck in her abdomen - now that she could see it, it was the broadcast antenna for the comm dish. Ooh. _That_ was unfortunate. Moving quite gingerly now, Paige looked at the length of metal sticking out of her space suit, noting the cable tethering it (and her by extension) to the snapped off array for the satellite dish, which was nowhere to be found. She unhooked her multitool from her belt and cut the cable, sighing in relief as the tension vanished from the antenna in her side. She jabbed the control pad on the arm of her suit to shut that incessant beeping up, finally. Paige shuffled around on her knees, blinking tears of pain out of her eyes as she caught sight of the Hab - fucking hell it was far away. Ever so carefully as to not aggravate the antenna in her side, Paige rose to her feet and shuffled past the solar farm, Rover Two, and Rover One before finally reaching the Hab. At this point she could feel the tacky stick-unstick of her bloody tee shirt against her skin, and she tried to keep her breathing steady as the airlock cycled. She slogged into the medbay after pulling off her helmet and gloves and stared down at the antenna poking out of her suit.

This wasn’t gonna be fun.

* * *

An hour later, Paige was bundled up in a blanket at the kitchen table, a cup of hot tea clutched between her palms and a holoscreen perched in front of her. She’d already recorded her log of the past twelve hours after picking shards of antenna out of her side, and was staring blankly at the calculations she'd whipped up concerning her food supplies and possible escape from the Red Hell Ball that she was currently stuck on. Essentially, she had enough food for a year, but unless she figured out how to become a plant she was fucked. 

This was discounting the Very Real possibility of the HAB breaking and her eyes freezing in her sockets from the sudden pressure and temperature change, and  _wow_ , she didn't want to think about that for too long! Paige's grip on her mug tightened, and her heartbeat swelled in her ears. Fuck, she wished her team was with her.

There was Zenyatta, one of the few Omnic astronauts to be considered for the Ares missions. He was their medic and psychiatrist, as well as their backup engineer. Their chemist and navigator was Jesse, practical jokester and whip-smart. She's actually gone to grad school with him - they'd been thick as thieves, and their theses had been spring boarded off one another's brainstorming sessions. System operator was Doctor Satya Vaswani - brilliant software engineer and hard-light architect. Paige hadn't been too close too her - she was so smart it was a little terrifying sometimes, but she had an appreciation for Paige's bio-engineered botany projects that Paige respected. Hana Song was their pilot; an exemplar of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, she'd been selected not only for her incredible flying skills, but for her natural charisma that helped glue the team together. And then there was Commander Morrison. He was their geologist, and it'd been a fun road to Mars with him on board. Paige wasn't too clear on the details, but he'd been the poster boy for NASA back in the day, disgraced for a number of years, and returned for Ares I and II. She'd been expecting the usual military hard ass, but to her delight she received a quietly sarcastic geologist who just wanted to be left alone with his rocks. Their respective fields meant they shared a lab on the  _Hermes_ , and Paige often got to listen to his ancient tunes from the teens and twenties. She'd never tell him this to his face, of course, but they weren't half bad - she'd caught herself humming them in the shower more than twice. Before she fell asleep, in that strange space between dreams and waking, her brain insisted that his silver-white hair and broad shoulders made him ruggedly handsome in a way that was near impossible to ignore.

Paige glanced around the HAB, finding little traces of their presence - an empty coffee mug, a datapad and hardlight projector with a tiny lily half-built hovering over it, a pair of reading glasses, an old 3DS-XL. To her horror, tears began to well up in her eyes. The scribbles on the hologram swam before her eyes. The rabbiting of her heart reached a new level, brain unhelpfully conjuring up countless scenarios of the ways she could - and most likely would - die on this red dustball planet. Paige shoved herself away from the counter, her breath loud in her ears. She needed to calm down, and she needed to do it _now_.

She ran through a mental checklist of what might be causing her panic attack; was she overly hungry or dehydrated? _(no she'd just eaten)_

Was she in pain? _(yes but the painkillers would kick in soon enough)_

Was she too hot or too cold? _(yes it was a bit cooler than she liked in the Hab at the moment)_

Was she lonely? _(yes_ **fuck** _she was so lonely and_ **afraid** _she missed her crew but they were safe and far away but safe)_

There it is. She needed a simulation of a human embrace - and one of the most important parts of the feel of a hug was the smell of the person you were hugging.

Paige stumbled into the bunkroom, eyes darting around for an article of clothing that wasn't hers, something that smelled like another person that wasn't her - _there_.

Crumpled on Commander Morrison's bed was his stunt-jacket - left behind in the desperate scramble to reach the MAV before it tipped. Paige sat down next to it and ran her fingers over the colorful leather, nervousness gripping her belly with sharp claws. She knew the jacket was special to the Commander - given that he'd used a significant portion of his personal weight allotment to bring it along - but he was millions of miles away and she doubted he'd mind if she wore it on occasion to simulate the presence of another human being, and wow, that got depressing fast. Mind made up, she pulled it off his bed and shrugged it on, the hem brushing her mid thigh, sleeves swallowing her hands, and the shoulder span several inches too big on either side. Paige buried her nose into the soft fleece lining, every inhale delivering the scent of Martian regolith, supple leather, and musk.

It was absolutely perfect.

She rolled up the sleeves to her elbows and went back into the kitchen, determined to ransack the place for any useful things she'd missed the first go around.

* * *

Several million miles away, Commander Jack Morrison's visor readout began to blip with a heartbeat.

**Author's Note:**

> how did the signal reach that far, you ask? the Power of Love, babey. 
> 
> This was interesting to edit because I had apparently decided to jump around while writing it, so I needed to fill in some scenes. My writing style has changed significantly, but I liked where my 2017 self was trying to go so I tried to match it. I hope the differences aren't too noticeable


End file.
